1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, which communicates with a peripheral device such as a finisher, a paper feeder, or an ADF (Automatic Document Feeder), and is capable of acquiring information regarding such device, and also relates to an image forming system in which at least one of such peripheral devices is attached to the image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, devices positioned on the downstream side of copying machines, printers and other such image forming apparatuses, such as devices for hole punching or binding recording paper to be output, inserters for inserting coversheets and interleaves, devices for stacking large amounts of paper, bookbinding machines for binding, folding machines for folding operations and other such finishers or paper feeders for supplying large amounts of paper, are widely known and used. These days there is demand for a copying machine, which can be connected to devices having various functions, and which by using the functions of such devices can perform various operations. Furthermore, there is demand for enabling such functions to be selected on the users' side. On the other hand, as copying machines are set to automatically turn off when not in use to reduce energy usage and minimize environmental impact, to improve usability of this feature, there is also demand for the reduction of the waiting time from when the copying machine is turned on until the time when a user can start using.
An invention disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 337957, for example, is well known as a technology addressing these kinds of demands. This invention is a network system which includes document transport means, image forming means and paper feeding means, and which is connected to a plurality of image forming apparatuses via communication means for communicating motion commands, status, image information and the like. This network system is characterized in that when a plurality of image forming apparatuses are made to share and perform one printing operation, an image forming apparatus which an operator operates, issues resource use requests to other image forming apparatuses which are to share the printing operation. In response to this use request these other image forming apparatuses determine whether or not to grant resource use, and issue resource use permission to the image forming apparatus operated by the operator. The network system also comprises means for when a malfunction occurs in a specific image forming apparatus, which stops the operation of the image forming apparatus in which the malfunction has occurred, while continuing operation of all other normally operating image forming apparatuses without modification. The network system also further comprises means for when a malfunction occurs in an image forming apparatus other than the image forming apparatus operated by the operator, which outputs a warning to the image forming apparatus operated by the operator, stating that a malfunction has occurred and specifying the image forming apparatus in which the malfunction occurred.
Conventionally, resource use demands, resource use permission, and occurrences of malfunctions are handled in the manner disclosed in the patent publication described above. However, initial information is given no particular consideration. In other words, in the conventional technology, as the completion of transmission of initial information is unknown, displaying on the operating unit starts after an amount of time has passed in which it is thought that the initial information has been completely transmitted. In this manner, conventionally displaying on the operating unit starts at an estimated time, and as such for a period of time no functions are displayed on the operating unit. This results in a large period of waiting time until a user can start using. If for a period of time no functions are displayed on the operating unit, when there are numerous devices attached to the image forming apparatus, as the amount of initial information increases and due to the individual connection time for each device, this results in an even longer waiting time.
Technologies relating to the present invention are also disclosed in, e.g., Japanese Patent Publication No. 3397763, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-214812, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-063050, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H11-015772, and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H11-017712.